School bullying: moving beyond a single school response to a whole education approach

ABSTRACT

Bullying is an issue that continues to represent a significant challenge to the provision of pastoral care in schools. In more recent decades, it has evolved in its complexity to include forms of bullying often referred to as cyberbullying or online bullying. Reflecting a wider discourse on pastoral care, recent analysis of how schools have been addressing bullying (face-to-face and online) has resulted in a recognition that initiatives to address school bullying must involve a wider community than a single school. This paper will briefly consider the scope and impact of school bullying (including its online expression) and then report on innovative research that was conducted in conjunction with UNESCO using the eDelphi method of consultation to understand the best way to tackle school bullying at a global level. We outline in detail how experts recommend a move from a whole-school to a whole-education approach to tackling bullying.

KEYWORDS:

• school bullying
• cyberbullying
• while education approach
• eDelphi method

Introduction

Despite definitional debates over the years, pastoral care is well established in one form or another as a core component to the operation of schools in the UK and Ireland (Lang et al., 1983; Norman, 2004; Trotman, 2019). It has been argued that earlier approaches to pastoral care in schools reflected hierarchies and paternalistic views of childhood that were commonly found in religiously owned and controlled schools across the UK and Ireland (Best, 2000; Norman, 2004). These approaches influenced how schools tackled issues such as discipline and bullying, often relying on monitoring and controlling individual student behaviour. More recent conceptions of pastoral care critique the paternalism of the past and instead recognise the influence of wider societal contexts and the role of agency in childhood, which it is argued is key to addressing issues that impact on children in schools (Esteban, 2022; O’Higgins Norman, 2020).

One such issue that continues to represent a significant challenge to the provision of pastoral care in schools and the achievement of wellbeing among students of all ages is bullying. The problem of bullying is as old as schooling itself, but in more recent decades, it has evolved in its complexity to include forms of bullying often referred to as cyberbullying or online bullying. Although there has been much attention on online bullying, it is important to note that it rarely exists apart from face-to-face bullying, as evidenced by research in the UK that found that while 29% of teenagers reported being bullied, only 1% reporting being targets of cyberbullying alone (Wolke et al., 2017). Similar to the wider discourse on pastoral care, recent analysis of how schools have been addressing bullying (face-to-face and online) has resulted in a recognition that initiatives to address school bullying must involve a wider community than a single school (Cornu et al., 2022). This paper will briefly consider the scope and impact of school bullying (including its online expression) and then report on innovative research that was conducted with UNESCO to understand the best way to tackle school bullying at a global level.

School bullying – how significant is the issue

The United Nations (UN) has highlighted the link between accessing safe and inclusive schooling and the wellbeing and prosperity of people across societies. Through the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), all countries are mandated to address bullying. In particular, SDG 4 reminds Governments of their obligation to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning for all, while SDG 16 promotes peaceful and inclusive societies. As a consequence of this imperative to address school bullying UNESCO undertook a study to understand the scope and nature of the problem of bullying in schools across the globe. Their report found that globally one in three children experience bullying at school (UNESCO, 2019). If we further examine recent data from Ireland, we find that 17% of 9–17-year-olds reported that they had experienced some form of bullying, either online or offline, in the past year. The highest number of reports came from 13–14-year-olds, 22% of whom report having been bullied in the past year. Furthermore, 11% of all children say that they have experienced cyberbullying in the past 12 months with 18% of 13–14-year-olds reporting the highest level of being cyberbullied. The data from Ireland suggest that girls are more prone to being bullied and experiencing online safety issues (National Online Safety Advisory Board, 2021). Depending on which study is used, the data from the UK present a worrying situation with higher prevalence rates than Ireland, with one study showing that 24% of 15-year-olds reporting that they had been bullied at school (UNESCO, 2019) and another study finding that 29% of teenagers in the UK report being targeted for bullying (Wolke et al., 2017). Furthermore, this rises to 32% in England and 34% in Scotland, with 41% of 9–10-year-olds reporting being bullied in Northern Ireland (UNESCO, 2019). The UK data are at the higher end of the prevalence scale for children reporting being targeted when we consider it against the wider European findings where the overall median prevalence of bullying reported in Europe is 25% (UNESCO, 2019). Regardless of where Ireland and the UK sit on the prevalence scale, the data from these countries and the wider data from Europe confirms that bullying at school remains a significant problem and indicates that further solutions are required if we are to ensure that all children can access safe and inclusive education and in doing so put down the foundations of wider inclusive and equitable societies.

In terms of who is bullied, research shows that identity is key to being targeted. Both at a global level and in Europe, physical appearance was the number one predictor of being targeted for bullying. In Europe, 25% of those who were bullied said they were targeted based on their physical appearance, 8.2% said they were bullied because of their race, nationality or colour of their skin, and 3.6% reported that they were bullied because of their religion (UNESCO, 2019). Although the overall data in the report showed a reduction in bullying in Europe, these findings still show that a high number of students are targeted because of their identity and this is something that requires action at different levels in the education system.

The impact of bullying on mental health, education achievement, and overall wellbeing can be significant (Foody et al., 2017). One study found that exposure to bullying can lead to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, psychosis, and even suicide across all age groups (Wolke et al., 2013). Furthermore, lower academic achievement and early school leaving have been identified as outcomes of bullying experiences among children and young people (Cornell et al., 2013; Hammig & Jozkowski, 2013). Another study in England found that face-to-face bullying resulted in greater variability in mental health when compared to those who were targeted for cyberbullying. However, both forms of bullying were found to be associated with poorer wellbeing (Kim et al., 2018; Przybylski & Bowes, 2017) particularly among females and males with poorer quality friendships (Foody et al., 2019).

Research AIM

The research reported in this paper was conducted by an international team convened by UNESCO to:

1. identify what is successful in current practice;

2. identify challenges in current practice;

3. develop recommendations on how to tackle bullying in schools.

Research method

The research was conducted between August and November 2020, which means that the project was initially hindered by the global pandemic and had to adopt an innovative way of undertaking the research. It was decided to use the e-Delphi method as it has a proven track record as a quick, efficient and successful method in medicine and a number of other evidence based fields where face-to-face consultation is not always possible (Steurer, 2011). The method consists of a series of structured group processes to anonymously survey expert opinion and reach a group consensus based on individual responses to a particular set of questions. After the initial round of consultation with the panel of experts and having factored in dissenting views, the researchers collect and systematically organise the consensus across the panel of experts. A key benefit to the e-Delphi method is that each member of the panel of experts can respond to a set of questions in an anonymous survey without knowing who else is on the panel and therefore eliminate any possibility of group dynamic or bias (Donohoe et al., 2012). Once the initial consultation has been completed, the findings are then sent out to the individual members of the panel of experts again with refined questions to allow for a deeper reflection on the same topic and this is repeated several times until the researchers have saturated the views of the panel and/or time runs out.

In the case of this research, the e-Delphi consultation took place over a 4-week period between the end of September and the start of October 2020. This allowed for two rounds of consultation with the panel of experts who were invited to participate in a virtual consultation involving the following steps:

Step 1 – the panel of experts were invited to complete an online survey prepared by the research team. In that survey, they were asked to:

• Assess a list of known interventions and decide whether they are good or promising practices that are effective in preventing and responding to bullying, based on evidence and knowledge of education sector responses to bullying in their country, region and/or at a global level;

• Propose additional interventions not already listed in the survey that are considered good or promising practices, based on the evidence available to each panel member;

• Identify the specific measures taken by education authorities that have evidence to suggest they can maximise the implementation of these good and promising practices, i.e. levers of success.

Step 2 – the research team undertook a thematic analysis of the responses from the panel of experts, then asked the experts to score each of the practices as good and promising practices, and then building on the survey results from round one, the research team developed a matrix of the good and promising practices and levers of success that were identified by the panel of experts, with supporting references to related research. This matrix also included references were available to supporting evidence of the good and promising practices and the levers of success agreed on by the experts. The matrix was uploaded to an online platform, and the panel of experts were invited to supplement the existing evidence with any other examples of quality evidence that they believed should be included.

Following this second round of consultation with the panel of experts, the research team then developed a summary of the findings based on the two rounds of consultation.

Research participants – panel of experts

One of the most critical aspects of the e-Delphi method is the selection of appropriate qualified experts. In this case, the research team developed a convenience sample of approximately 43 experts from different regions of the world. They included:

1. Academics with extensive expertise in education sector, responses to school bullying and cyberbullying;

2. Representatives of UN agencies and other multi-governmental organisations with programmes related to school bullying;

3. Representatives of international or national NGOs with experience in the response to school bullying and cyberbullying, working closely with education authorities;

4. Governmental experts who manage national or sub-national anti-bullying programmes in their respective countries, within Ministries of Education or other government authorities.

The panel of experts were informed that they were expected to make practical and evidence-based recommendations to policy-makers on what governments, particularly education authorities, should do to maximise the implementation of comprehensive education sector responses to school bullying that are effective in reducing the prevalence of bullying and maintaining it at a low-level nationally over a sustained period of time. With support from UNESCO, the research team ensured that there was an even balance of male and female experts on the panel as well as representation from both developed and developing countries.

Research findings

Whole-education approach

Reflecting other research by Gaffney et al. (2019) found that many anti-bullying programmes only reduce school-bullying perpetration by approximately 19–20% and school-bullying victimization by approximately 15–16%, the panel of experts highlighted the need to develop an approach that was broader than a single whole-school approach. While whole-school approaches have been recommended in policy and procedures for several decades, it was felt that this approach put too much responsibility on single schools to tackle bullying from within their own resources without sufficient recognition of the important role to be played by the wider education system and society. Schools exist within a wider education system and society. Initiatives to tackle bullying need to recognize the interconnectedness of the school with the wider community including education, technological and societal systems. As such, a broader whole-education approach is needed to really tackle bullying in schools. Based on the consultation with the panel of experts, we identified nine core components of a whole-education approach, which are set out below.

Strong political leadership

The need to have strong political leadership across government, society and also at a school level was found to be a core component of a comprehensive whole-education approach to tackling bullying. This means that anti-bullying laws, policies, frameworks and guidelines need to be provided by government so that corresponding policies and procedures can be developed at community and school levels. Furthermore, the consultation found that these laws and policies needed to be driven by members of government with specific responsibility not only for tackling school bullying but also related issues such as inclusion and diversity. Furthermore, the panel of experts highlighted the need to ensure that existing laws and policies should be adapted to cover cyberbullying. The extent to which political leadership prioritises tackling school bullying will have a definite impact on the confidence of local school leaders to implement anti-bullying initiatives. Purdy (2021) argues that insufficient attention has been given to leadership as an important component in tackling bullying, and this is something that was also highlighted by our expert participants. Furthermore, Smith (2021) concludes that no single law can fully deal with school bullying and that the best laws and policies in the world rely on political leadership and execution if they are to be impactful.

Safe psychological and physical school and classroom environments

We found that the panel of experts were concerned about how to create an environment where students and the whole school community feel safe, secure, welcomed and supported. In order to achieve this safe environment, all school staff, (e.g. teachers, Special Needs Assistants (SNAs), classroom assistants, counsellors, chaplains, administrative, bus drivers, and caretakers) should be sensitized and supported to foster a caring school environment free of bullying behaviour. It was clear from the responses to the survey that the panel of experts were concerned about safety being left solely to teachers or counsellors in schools. The importance of everyone feeling responsible for each other’s emotional and physical wellbeing was clear. The findings showed that the creation of a safe school was strongly connected to coping strategies being taught to students for their own wellbeing and that of their peers. However, Fox and Harrison (2021) warn that the research on coping strategies and ways of supporting those who are bullied is inconclusive and more longitudinal studies are needed to fully understand what type of strategies are most effective in creating caring relationships with staff, students and parents in classroom and school environments.

Training and support for school staff

The panel of experts strongly recommended that teachers and other school staff should be supported through pre-service and in-service training on bullying prevention and intervention. There was a consensus that this type of training on pre-service teacher education courses was minimal or non-existent, and that while in-service opportunities were often available, teachers and other staff tended to opt for training in STEM, numeracy, literacy and other aspects of schooling that were being prioritised by school management and government. However, unless a child feels emotionally and physical safe at school, their educational outcomes in relation to other aspects of the curriculum will be negatively impacted. Previous research shows that students tend not to disclose being targeted to teachers (Sjursø et al., 2019). Mazzone et al. (2021) argue that this is because students do not have confidence in their teacher’s ability to respond in a confident and knowledgeable manner. Thence, the expert participants in this study advised ensuring that all school staff were required to undertake in-service training on bullying. Furthermore, the consultation recommended the need for positive and appropriate work conditions for school staff so that they are better able to provide support for students.

Curriculum, learning and teaching to promote caring school climate

Purdy (2021) highlights the conceptual challenges of defining school climate, pointing out that words like ‘climate’, ‘ethos’, and ‘atmosphere’ are often used interchangeably, but there is no doubt that school climate is key to tackling bullying. Teachers and other school staff play a significant role in developing a bullying-free and caring school environment (Yoon & Bauman, 2014). There was a consensus among the experts that teachers should use a range of interactive strategies to engage students and to develop their abilities in relation to decision-making and problem-solving, team work, and communication skills. This type of curriculum (and related participatory pedagogies) has been shown to increase a sense of connection and belonging among school children resulting in better decision-making and empathy (Allen, 2010; Keating & Collins, 2021) all of which promotes a caring classroom and school climate. The connection between curriculum, teaching and learning and school climate is a recurring theme in research, with (1) respect, (2) clear expectations, (3) personal responsibility, and (4) recognition often called out as the foundation to a caring school climate (Hinduja & Patchin, 2012). Essentially, the quality of the interpersonal relationships and the type of teaching and learning in a school determine the extent to which a school is experienced as caring and children are facilitated to enhance their empathetic skills.

Reporting mechanisms with support and referral services

Our findings from the consultation with the experts highlighted the importance of schools and educational authorities ensuring that staff were available and responsible for monitoring bullying in schools and that there were supports available to students who were affected by bullying. Research has identified that reporting mechanisms need to be seen to be effective or otherwise they will feed into a reluctance on the part of students to report bullying when it occurs (Zhang et al., 2021). At a school level, this reluctance to report may be addressed by having an Anti-Bullying Coordinator in each school. This role may be held by other pastoral care staff such as Year Heads and Class Tutors, however, school management should also consider non-teaching staff such as SNAs, Chaplains and school Guidance Counsellors, all of whom tend to hold a whole-school role and as such they are well placed to lead and monitor bullying behaviours across the school. Regardless of who holds the position of Anti-Bullying Coordinator, it should be an identifiable and well-resourced role in a school. S/he can work with school management and school support teams to ensure that there are consistent and age-appropriate reporting channels and mechanisms known and accessible to the school community so that when there is a concern about bullying it can be recognized, reported and responded to efficiently and without delay. In this sense, the school reporting systems should be integrated with known and accessible community support and referral services outside of the school and across the education system. Finally, in recent years, it has become apparent that there needs to be collaboration with social media platforms to ensure that school staff, parents and students can report online bullying with relative ease and find a resolution to situations without delay. This is where the wider education system including relevant government departments need to ensure that there are open channels from the school to social media companies and that school staff can raise concerns and make reports on behalf of students.

Collaboration and partnerships between the education sector and a wide range of partners

It has been well established that schools are potential hubs for integrating the work of different agencies in order to provide a holistic response to the mental health needs of students (Wolpert et al., 2013) and it has been argued that such a wrap-around approach to bullying can be equally as successful (Downes, 2022). So it is not surprising that we also found that the experts recommended that there should be collaboration between the education authorities and different sectors including health, social services, law enforcement, justice, social media companies, and other relevant stakeholders who can play a role in tackling bullying and online safety. The world of an individual student in a school today is wide and complex, off-line and online, and as such other relevant sectors should provide resources and support to reduce bullying and cyberbullying, including social media companies. Furthermore, collaboration between the educational sector and academia to better understand bullying and how to reduce it will be helpful. These types of partnerships, with social media companies and academia, tend to occur in an ad hoc fashion, which reduces the scope of their success and impact. Government policy can play a role in encouraging and resourcing collaboration and partnerships between schools, education districts, parents organisations, academia, social media companies and NGOs to name a few, all of which is aimed at reducing and tackling bullying behaviour in the lives of children and young people.

Involvement of all stakeholders in the school community, including parents

The panel of experts highlighted that every stakeholder in the school community should be involved in tackling bullying and anti-bullying initiatives. Too often tackling bullying is left to individual classroom teachers who are already overloaded with the responsibility of delivering school curricula, whereas building a caring and bullying-free school should be understood as something that is the responsibility of principals, teachers, SNAs, Chaplains, Guidance Counsellors and other school staff, all of whom can monitor and respond to bullying behavior in accordance with their individual remits across the school. Likewise, there is an important role to be played by school boards of governors, parents associations, and ultimately students themselves. Fundamentally, it is important that these different stakeholders across the school do not work on bullying prevention and intervention in isolation from each other but as a team in an integrated way. However, teachers’ self-concept and professional identity can inhibit such an integration of stakeholders. For example, teachers who view themselves and their professional role solely in terms of their own knowledge and skills may be less likely to be able to collaborate with other stakeholders, especially non-teaching colleagues, across the school. Instead, teachers need to reconsider their professional identity so that they understand their position at the centre of a social-ecological system (i.e. school) which will help them to understand their importance as part of a wider team of professionals who may either acquiesce or respond appropriately to bullying behaviour (Green, 2021).

Student empowerment and participation

The findings from the research consultation found that experts recommended that bullying prevention programmes should be participatory in nature and peer led so that students can learn to take responsibility for their own safety and that of their peers. Reflecting findings from previous studies (Menesini et al., 2021; Smith et al., 2012), they recommended that anti-bullying programmes that were student led and relied less on didactic approaches would be the most successful in reducing school bullying (off-line and online). According to the panel of experts, of particular importance is the place of bystanders within anti-bullying programmes. Focusing on the empowerment of bystanders has been shown in other research to play a role in tackling bullying among students in schools (Cowie, 2021). Programmes such as the Diana Award Anti-Bullying Ambassador Programme in the UK and the FUSE Anti-Bullying and Online Safety Programme in Ireland use a suite of participatory workshops and resources to help students learn how to recognize, respond and, if necessary, report bullying behavior among their peers. Cowie (2021) has identified five key components that are usually found across peer support programmes aimed at tackling bullying. These are (1) peer supporters are usually volunteers, (2) there is a mutually shared understanding of what issue is being addressed, (3) peer supporters are often selected through a process involving their peers, (4) peer supporters usually receive very focused training, and (5) supervision and debriefing are provided on a regular basis. In summary, if student empowerment is to be successful in tackling bullying, then peer support programmes in schools need to be well planned, resourced and integrated into the wider school.

Evidence: monitoring of school bullying and evaluation of responses

The expert panel recommended that a successful approach to tackling school bullying should involve monitoring bullying within schools and across the education system. Furthermore, they said that there needs to be regular assessment of the effectiveness of preventative and intervention measures at a school and system level. Finally, they recommended that monitoring and assessment should involve both students and school staff and should include questions about the wider school climate. Many countries already collect data that can be used to monitor and assess the type and scope of bullying and the impact of various initiatives to tackle bullying. However, it is important that data are collected in a way that allows for both school- and system-level insights that in turn can provide guidance on local and system-wide responses to bullying. Ad hoc measurement by different stakeholders runs the risk of not capturing the fullness of the situation as it occurs across the school system. It also means that different responses to different sets of data will be developed and as such there will be a fragmented approach to tackling a problem that exists across society and the wider education system. However, recent research has warned about an over-reliance on self-report questionnaires without high-quality methodological and analytical treatment of data (Hunter et al., 2021). A mixed methods approach to measuring and monitoring bullying prevalence and the impact of anti-bullying initiatives will most likely produce a more insightful and meaningful understanding of the situation.

Conclusion

From a pastoral care point of view, bullying continues to be an issue that schools struggle to overcome. Given the dynamic nature of schools with students, parents and staff frequently joining and leaving, it is probably reasonable to conclude that bullying is a pastoral care issue that cannot be solved once and for all. However, based on the findings from the research we conducted, in partnership with UNESCO, it seems that there is a consensus among experts that we need to move away from a single school (whole-school) approach to a whole-education approach if we are to recognise and respond to school bullying in the most impactful way to tackle the issue. Finally, although we may be tempted to treat the above list of core components of the whole-education approach as a menu from which items can be chosen, the experts were clear that no one component on its own can satisfactorily address bullying. All aspects of the whole-education approach must be implemented across schools and the wider education system at the same time. Thus, our response to school bullying as a pastoral care issue will be consistent and impactful for students, parents and school staff alike.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).